McKibben to Visit Colorado amid Failing Ban-Fracking Campaign
Wednesday May 11, 2016
Anti-fracking activist Bill McKibben will be visiting Colorado this weekend in what appears to be an attempt to breathe life into the failing ban-fracking campaign.
McKibben will be accompanied by a number of national activist organizations also travelling to the state under the banner of Break Free 2016 for two protests they are touting will be one of the “largest mass mobilizations for climate action in the history of Colorado” with the event on Saturday featuring a talk from McKibben himself.
While McKibben may succeed in transporting activists from out of state, he hasn’t had much success with actual Coloradoans. McKibben’s trip comes on the heels of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that local government fracking bans and moratoria are “invalid and unenforceable.” The ruling served as a major setback for activists behind a series of ballot initiatives to ban fracking in the state. In a further sign that the state’s media understands how extreme McKibben’s positions are, the Denver Post editorial board wrote that the “Colorado Supreme Court gets it right on fracking.”
That’s not all. McKibben’s push for higher education institutions to divest their holdings in fossil fuels has been rejected by college campuses across the state including the University of Colorado. University of Colorado Regent John Carson told the Boulder Daily Camera:
“We’re not going to start picking and choosing investments based on people’s political views,” he s...